Montréal Urban Perceptions Meeting
Background
We want to explore how people’s perceptions of urban trees varies with their sociodemographics. Specifically, we want to dig deeper into understanding people’s perceptions in Montréal. We want to use the survey data to ask more pointed and meaningful questions about Montréal specifically (e.g., examine the issue of language).
There is potential for 2+ papers here. Following the first meeting, we decided that the questions of governance and management could be tackled by Emile in a separate paper, as he has a lot of expertise in this field.
This paper will be focused on questions regarding the valuation and beliefs surrounding urban trees (as opposed to questions of governance, tree knowledge, etc.)
Proposed Research Question
How are Montréal residents’ values and beliefs concerning urban trees influenced by city type, country of origin, preferred language, dwelling type, education level?
Dependent variables:
- Tree Value survey questions (15) - e.g., How important to you are each of the following things about these trees: large old trees?
- Tree Beliefs (Negative) survey questions (12) - e.g., How much do you agree that the trees in your city or neighbourhood are ugly?
- Tree Beliefs (Positive) survey questions (12) - e.g., How much do you agree that the trees in your city or neighbourhood are calming?
Independent variables:
- City type (inner, middle, outer, regional)
- Country of origin (Canadian born with Canadian born parents, Canadian born with parents born abroad, born abroad)
- Preferred language(English, French, Other with preferred official language English, Other with preferred official language French)
- Dwelling type (house, apartment in a house, apartment in a building, other, prefer not to answer)
- Education level (prefer not to answer, did not complete high school, high school, trade school, bac, masters, doc)
Justification: People’s values and beliefs concerning urban trees are inherently died to the delivery and access of ecosystem services. To effectively manage and produce ecosystem services that truly serve people, we require knowledge surrounding what people value and what drives individual differences in values. The independent variables were selected based on the variables shown to influence street tree cover in Pham et al. (2017). In addition, we are testing the effect of city type on tree values and beliefs, as there is literature showing a divide in conceptions of nature between urban and rural residents (cite).
Hypothesis: values and beliefs concerning urban trees are influenced by sociodemographics directly and indirectly through exposure to trees (i.e., amount of street tree cover in your neighbourhood).
Predictions: would love some help from Hiên and Emile to craft some predictions for each independent variable (e.g., how do we predict level of education will influence values and beliefs concerning urban trees?). I am happy to craft them together but I think the social science expertise offered by Hiên and Emile will strengthen the predictions a lot.
Street Tree Cover
The variables selected: country of origin, preferred language, dwelling type, and education level are all based on Pham et al. (2017), which demonstrates the relationship between these variables and street tree cover in Montreal. We can conceive of the relationship between these sociodemographic variables and values and beliefs surrounding urban trees as direct and indirect, where the indirect effect is the effects of sociodemographics on tree values and beliefs through street tree cover. This begs the question:
Should we add street tree cover to our models?
- Without adding street tree cover, we can measure the total effect of sociodemographics on people’s values/beliefs (this includes the unmeasured effect of the influence of street tree cover on their values/beliefs). If we choose to add street tree cover, we can measure the direct effect of sociodemographics on people’s values and beliefs by controlling for street tree cover.
To measure street tree cover, we would assign respondents a “neighbourhood” using the first 3 digits of postal codes, and then measure the average canopy cover in that area.
Potential Issues:
- Only 2/3 (~1,100) of respondents provided this information, so we would lose some data
- Postal code areas have wide variation in size, especially in rural areas they are quite large, so this may not facilitate the best comparison
Tree Values
There are 16 questions that we asked survey respondents regarding how they value urban trees. They are as follows (strikethrough indicates no significant relationship with any of our independent variables, significant relationships will be visualized below):
How important to you are each of the following things about these trees
large old trees
a place for human history and stories
getting away from stresses of everyday lifea place for a short walk
learning about cultural traditions
a place that is accessible for everybodyclean air, clean water, and healthy cities
many kinds of native animals, birds, and plants
make the city more welcoming
a more liveable city
spaces for people to interact and socializetrees improving community cohesion
beautiful sights, sounds, and smells
a healthy environment that supports human lifeattracting tourists and residents to the citymaintain Indigenous or European cultures
Each independent variable that was significantly associated with one or more of the questions is visualized in both a boxplot and barplot below.
Tree Beliefs (Negative)
There are 14 questions that we asked survey respondents regarding their negative beliefs about urban trees. They are as follows (strikethrough indicates no significant relationship with any of our independent variables, significant relationships will be visualized below):
How much do you agree that trees in your city or neighbourhood
cause allergies- block the visibility of road signs
- damage property including concrete paths and power lines
- create mess
- are ugly
- use too much water
- block water pipes and drains
- block the sun
- are expensive to maintain
- drop branches
- take up too much space
- promote wildfires
- attract undesirable animals
- make me feel stressed
Each independent variable that was significantly associated with one or more of the questions is visualized in both a boxplot and barplot below.
Tree Beliefs(Positive)
There are 13 questions that we asked survey respondents regarding their positive beliefs about urban trees. They are as follows (strikethrough indicates no significant relationship with any of our independent variable, significant relationships will be visualized below):
How much do you agree that trees in your city or neighbourhood
- attract desirable animals
- screen unattractive views
- make streets and parks safer
- are calming
- clean the air
- provide shade
- produce oxygen
- cool the neighbourhood
- reduce flooding
- make a place good for shopping
- increase property value
- are spiritual
- make me feel healthy
Each independent variable that was significantly associated with one or more of the questions is visualized in both a boxplot and barplot below.
Next Steps
All decide if we want a meeting to discuss progress so far/next steps/etc.
Hiên and Emile consult if the variables selected make sense, and if so, what our predictions are
All decide if we want to incorporate street tree cover into the model
Bella finalizes models + finds better way to visualize/present outputs